


Anonymous: Fanfiction

by Davechicken



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Anonymous promptfill, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-11
Updated: 2013-12-11
Packaged: 2018-01-04 07:47:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,650
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1078389
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Davechicken/pseuds/Davechicken
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Charlie is reading the 'fanfiction' that is so clearly Edlund's work. Sometimes it's hard to remember it's all real. (Anonymous promptfill... is Anonymous God speaking to Prophets now?)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Anonymous: Fanfiction

After the initial shock of finding wi-fi in Oz - and even more surprising that it seemed to work _everywhere_ , making her wish she could work out how and why and use that back on Earth (when and if she ever went back) - Charlie just accepted it as yet another wonderful thing. Wonderful because it meant she got to stay in touch with her friends on the outside, download the latest episodes of _Game of Thrones_ and also get the latest of the 'Edlund' books onto her tablet to read when she needed to unwind.

She was confident that either the mysterious (but generous) 'BeckWinchester176' who kept posting new 'fanfiction' to the various archives was either in direct contact with - or indeed _was_ \- Edlund himself. Or Chuck. Whatever. It was all very confusing at times, but the author subscription popped up and she surfed onto the new novel. _Missing an Angel_ it was called, naturally.

She already knew what had happened from the horse's mouth. Dean did not, however, tell a story well and it was always very interesting to contrast his memory (or version) of events with Edlund's. Especially when it came to the characters around the sidelines, who were fleeting in their appearances.

Dean's version was - verbatim - the synopsis on the archive:

"So turns out that whole thing in Indiana Jones where there's a secret Government warehouse filled with supernatural crap is really a thing, and then some douche decides to break in and let out this ancient hooky demon-dude and he's dead set on destroying, like, _everything_ including Hell and all so we had to get freaking Crowley in on it and..."

Of course, that was when the synopsis cut off, because it would spoil things completely. Charlie found she didn't really mind knowing how it ended, because the day she didn't would likely be the day either Sam, Dean or she was dead. Well. Okay. She wouldn't be reading the story if she was dead but... whatever.

So she curled up around her tablet and started to read through the newest addition to the library.

The first thing that jarred was the sequence where they got to Crowley. They summoned him - which wasn't all that unusual - they'd worked with him a few times after that whole Gadreel incident and although Dean would never admit it even to her, she knew they considered him useful and better as an enemy of my enemy rather than an actual enemy.

The sequence just seemed... off.

~ * ~ *

_"Hello boys. Castiel."_

In the middle of the room - which had no traps painted, for once, as a show of good faith - the demon King of Hell appeared before the two hunters and their guardian angel.

"Let's cut to the chase," Dean said, his gruff voice sharp and to the point, his jaw squared with intent, his sea-green eyes flinty. "We need your help with something." Dean did not - and never would, never _could_ \- trust Crowley. He was a demon, and in a world where even angels wanted to end the world a demon was just one more piece of bad news. The older but shorter hunter's shoulders were rounded, as if the weight of having to ask this demon for help was bearing down on him.

"Oh, don't you ever?" The demon Crowley preened at his immaculate suit, examining himself as though dust or fluff could somehow stay on the body and clothes he wore. He was always so very well dressed, in comparison to the hunters who would only be so finely dressed when they were playing a role, when they were in character as one of their agents. But he seemed to enjoy the finer things, and he wore this all the time.

Crowley was ignoring their eyes, and Dean found his perpetual insouciance as irritating as he ever had. He would never admit that he was useful, that he was less blood-thirsty than other demons, but he would always come back to just one more deal with the devil he knew.

"It's never just a chat, is it? You never call me down because you want my opinion on which frilly pink panties to buy, or just to sit and talk about our feelings over a serving or two of our poisons of choice?"

"Crowley..." Sam started, as ever the voice of reason, taking a step forward to try and diffuse the tension, although he never used his size to dominate the conversation, and when he spoke it was always calm and even, unlike Dean. The hunter pushed his hair back behind his ear. It was long again, but long in a way that perfectly framed his features. These days his face looked older, but not from lines or any blemish to the skin. It was the years of fighting, the years of Hell which showed in his so-brave eyes.

"Moose," the demon smirked back at him in that rich, rolling accent of his, like the Craig he so loved to drink cracking over clouded icecubes. "Mustn't be rutting season, then. You killed any nice womenfolk recently?"

"This is serious." That was Castiel interrupting, his stoic voice as steady and unflappable as ever. "You are in danger, Crowley. We would like to work with you to benefit both parties."

~ * ~ *

This was where it got a little strange. Charlie had read _all_ the books. She knew about Castiel and Crowley's short-lived and tempestuous partnership. Really the books had done a reasonable attempt at covering up that plot reveal, but she'd picked up on the foreshadowing through the whole pre-Leviathan arc and had twigged on a little before their first shared scene and done a little victory dance when it had been confirmed. (Sometimes she thought the boys should contact her for help more often, they seemed so un-genre savvy for geeks that she wondered if it was just the blindness of _living_ the reality, or if they really were that dumb.)

But here was where they should snark together. Crowley (one of her favourite characters when she could bring herself to think of him as that, and not the dangerous, conniving, scheming, contract-writing King of Hell) would normally make some filthy double-entendre at this point. Especially around Castiel. And if not that, then he would react to the proposition of a _partnership_ from the angel specifically with... something more... like him.

He'd taken the break-up personally, after all. Charlie had hated reading that section of the book. For once Castiel had found his inner moral ambiguity enough to lie and cheat and steal, but apparently he had no qualms about dicking _anyone_ over. Crowley had done too good a job of appealing to his vanity then, and he'd stung the demon in the only place you still could hurt him: deal-breaking.

(You weren't supposed to root for the villains, she knew, but then she _was_ a geek. It was hard not to fall for the tragic, complicated characters with the interesting backstories: the Moriartys, the Lokis, the Khans, the... yeah. Okay. She had a type, and she kept being conflicted by the blur between fiction and reality.)

Instead of all the character development or snark... Crowley seemed to... what?

Charlie put the tablet down. He just... went along with it?

That was it?

All the emotional backstory and the layers of history and tension and he just...

He said _yes_?

Frustrated, she put it down and went to play some stupid mindless games for a while instead. Edlund was such a hack writer at times.

***

The rest of the book seemed a bit more normal, really. There were the usual red herrings and the mortal peril and the conversations in the Impala and the 'is he isn't he oh god is he' when first Sammy got whumped and then Dean nearly didn't make it and...

Of course it all came out in the end. Sure there was a bit of a body count (would it be the Supernatural series without it?) and something traumatic happened to Sam which Dean blamed himself for (again, something Dean would never have told her in his own recap) and there was the nice little bow at the end and the implication of more to come with the shadowy secret government bunker filled with more things to be opened and the question of _who_ was doing it, too.

None of the nasties of the week were ever going to be as good as what Dean had lovingly referred to as 'those freaking-ass monkey-dragon-fire-farting-belching-hoochies' (which she knew had to be the comedy book before the two-part novel in the middle of this 'series' or 'season'), but the plots toddled along comfortably enough. Surely they were scraping the barrel, though, if they were using monsters like _this_? Oh. Wait. Not fiction.

Reality.

Yeah.

The next book was _All This And Heaven Too_ , which was a bit strange because the whole angel plot had been tied up properly, and they were no longer an issue and Castiel was back to occasionally coming down to help them when things got rough.

The plot was fine. It was just the same as the others. Then there was a strange little exchange that she just didn't quite... get.

~ * ~ *

_"You know..." the demon said, as they stood outside the building. It was warded too tightly for either of them to enter, and even if they could have gone inside there was no saying that the Fae hadn't put countless traps around the warehouse. No, they were sitting this one out._

Castiel was sitting this one out. Crowley had arrived unexpectedly shortly after the two hunters had said their gruff, no-nonsense goodbyes. The ones that were never really 'goodbye for good just in case', but somehow said that all the same.

"...you know, you would have made a better God. If you hadn't - well - gone evil, betrayed everyone, let out the primordial evil and exploded..."

The angel's perfect cupid-bow mouth quirked in the tiniest of smiles.

"That is kind of you, Crowley, but you make a better King of Hell than I do leader of Heaven."

"You're better at leading that lot of over-stuffed murderous peacocks than _I_ would."

"Actually, I think your innate sense of order and justice as well as your focus on improvement and rigid command structure would work with many of the angels."

The demon's shoulders shook just once with a laugh he was repressing. "Shame about the whole 'torture, selfishness, power-hungry and all-around-evil', though?"

"Yes, those are all character flaws in potential divinities, I agree."

~ * ~ *

Charlie stared at the page. From what she could tell, Crowley had come with some flimsy bit of information he could just have easily have called the boys with, or texted them. She knew for a fact (and from previous books) that Crowley was easily capable of it. 

But no.

He'd come up to Earth in person, when the brothers were gone... seemingly just to 'chat' to Castiel.

And here - three books later? - was the conversation she'd expected when the 'deal', the collusion was first mentioned. Admittedly there was less snark to it than she'd been waiting for, it was... declawed. It wasn't angry and it wasn't sharp and it wasn't the wall-slamming-angry-faces of their deal days. Either Edlund was being inconsistent with his characterisation, or he was being really, _really_ subtle.

Not Edlund. Not Edlund, she reminded herself. He - Chuck - Becky - whoever was writing this was _transcribing reality_ , which meant that what she was reading had actually happened. Which meant it was actual character development. Which meant...

No.

Couldn't be.

~ * ~ *

_"How is Heaven?" Crowley asked. The demon had shaved again, his cheeks were bare and clean. Castiel found his eyes wandering over his jaw and down to his throat, checking that nothing was missed._

"Peaceful," Castiel told him, his eyes lifting back up; electric-blue to harvest-hazel. "And I don't just mean the ones I visit."

The two - the angel who would be God, and the demon who always wound up King - were in the library of the bunker. Walls of books with knowledge otherwise lost to humanity, some of it even lost to Heaven and Hell... and they were sitting in armchairs as if they were old friends.

"How is Hell?"

"Better now I finally routed out the last of the rebels," Crowley admitted. His fingers drummed on the fine leather arm of his chair, his perfectly-trimmed fingernails barely scratching as he did.

"And your new Hellhound?"

"Slowly being Hell-broken." Crowley chuckled at his unusually weak joke. "He's lovely, actually. A bit more of a tearaway than the last one. Keeps chewing at my shoes."

"Can't you make him stop?"

"Why would I? I think it's adorable. I am training him to steal everyone else's shoes instead and chew them, but..."

"I should like to see him. Before he is too old."

"Now _that_ I can arrange..."

~ * ~ *

Charlie wondered if Carver Edlund had been smoking the crack pipe with that. Seriously? Hellhounds? We interrupt your regular, scheduled bloodbath and world-about-to-end to bring you... angels and demons talking about chewed up shoes?

This was almost as gratuitous as the endless scenes where Sam and Dean had sat on the bonnet of the Impala talking about their past, or Backstory-Bobby as she had come to think of him, with his years of experience to draw on and his tales of when they were brats with water behind the ears. But this was Castiel. The angel who mostly got turned into a butt-monkey for jokes about how he didn't 'understand that reference' or was torn up about missing a God he didn't know, or the subject of 'profound bonds' with Dean. 

And then Crowley.

Who was usually used for a mixture of comic relief, sex jokes, occasional minor terror and mostly just because he was fabulous as all hell.

(Until that sequence in the church. God, had she loved that. She'd been glued to the screen, nearly crying at the heartfelt confessions and begging for mercy and love. That was when she'd truly fallen for him, not even before with his 'this isn't Wall Street'... she'd been sniffling a little throughout it, thinking how tragic it was, thinking how unfair it was that he probably would never get that love that he clearly did deserve...)

Maybe they were finally really becoming the friends she'd always thought they could be. After all, Cas and Sam and Dean were close and through his human friends he was learning a lot about the world... but deep down, Castiel was still an angel. Ancient. Immortal. (Various violent deaths and brief period as a human aside.)

Charlie had always been struck by the parallels between Castiel and Crowley. If it had been purely fiction she'd been reading she would have thought it was an interesting analogy: a demon with his own set of moral standards creeping up through dynastic slaughter perpetuated by the Winchesters with his conniving behind the scenes making it possible... and an angel with rebellious tendencies who nearly ruled Heaven but somehow managed to keep 'misbehaving' and being resurrected without ever being sent to Hell, whose mutinous, law-breaking streak again was fostered and encouraged and facilitated by the Winchesters. They were imperfect mirrors, showing the hypocrisy as clearly as Gabriel had.

But it wasn't fiction.

She had to keep reminding herself of that.

It wasn't fiction, and there were no guaranteed happy endings (just look at how many people had died and not come back) and it was wrong to try to apply artistic filters to the real world, even if Edlund was occasionally prone to painting with crude brushstrokes over some things. Like, say, brotherly love. Maybe it was because she knew they really _were_ brothers, but even though she could see the heavily implied incestuous subtext in the books, it just... didn't occur to her in reality. Sam and Dean were just close.

And Edlund had a hard-on for describing men being emotional and close and touching a lot.

A lot.

So it was the conditioning of his artistic style that made her wonder if there was something more, something implied in these moments of Craig and honesty. Something _to_ the sudden change from outright _filth_ in a barrage of pretty (and sometimes crude) terms, to this... cautious, two-sided banter.

No.

It was just because she was gay.

It was not because _they_ were.

Castiel wasn't even male.

~ * ~ *

_"You don't have to do this, you know."_

"I do," said Castiel, his brilliant blue eyes showing - for once - how old he truly was. For all he was still sometimes innocent about humanity and the world he found himself walking on. This angel had seen the first creatures crawl from the seas, this angel had witnessed the rise and fall of great empires. He had saved the world, saved the Righteous Man and saved himself.

"You could let me come."

"You know that they would not let you."

"You could make them let me." Crowley - the demon King - was standing close to the angel. Once his enemy, once his partner... forever his opposite. Dark suit to his pale. Red smoke to his black wings. An unlikely ally, but he was more than that, now.

He had been more than that for some time.

"Crowley..."

"Fine. But don't come crying to me when you die horribly, brutally, viciously and bloodily."

"I would be dead, then," Castiel replied, his eyes showing the amusement his tone never would.

"Yes, but you might still come back and complain."

"I have never complained about any time I have died."

"Oh will you just--"

The demon grabbed the angel in the trenchcoat by the lapels, tugging him down as he surged up to kiss him. Crowley's lips pressed against his, silencing any further argument, and the angel lifted one hand to lay gently over the blackened place where his heart once had been, the other holding just onto the demon's elbow. The kiss was awkward - not like the suave King's usual, perfectly composed kisses - and for once he didn't even try to slide his warm, wicked tongue in.

When they broke apart, the two immortal beings somehow forgot to let go of one another.

"And that--?"

"You just made a deal with me," Crowley insisted. "You said you'd come back."

"What did you offer in return?" the angel asked, leaning forwards and pressing their foreheads together. He did not want to step back. He did not want to go.

"Why don't you come back alive, first. Keep your end of the bargain, then we can see about mine."

"Yes," said the angel.

And then he was gone.

And the King of Hell was left alone.

~ * ~ *

Charlie nearly threw her tablet against the wall.

No! No!

They hadn't...

No!

Cas and Crowley? _Cas and Crowley_?!

She was sure she'd been seeing it all through her own rosy-tinted slash-goggles. Between that and Edlund's strangely homo-erotic way of describing _anything_ (seriously, was he this Chuck guy the brothers claimed or was that Becky secretly the fanfic writing mastermind?) she had been sure it was all just harmless... harmless...

No!

Crowley!

Castiel!

Her mind really wasn't coping well with this. Not in a bad way, of course. It was just... gay male ships _never_ got made canon. If she'd been a casual reader, she knew that she would consider her _own_ interest in women as thrown in order to keep the queer representation voices calm, but really the books were much more gay-friendly without being explicitly 'queer' fiction as it was, and...

Cas and Crowley! Did Dean know? Did Sam? 

They were perfect together, of course. She'd always known that, but she'd never expected that _Castiel_ of all people - angels - whatever - would be able to get past his upbringing to form such a relationship. And then there was Crowley! Crowley who so desperately wanted love, but who secretly had so many issues with trust and opening up to others, and...

Perfect! She bit her fist in excitement. It wasn't even about the... the... _sex_. Well, she didn't have any interest in what either of them had below the belt anyway. But they were so adorably perfect together that she was just bouncing up and down in dizzying headrush.

A demon! And an angel! It made her think of that book with... oh. Yes. _Crowley_ and Aziraphale. Why hadn't she thought of it before? Oh it was just so wonderful. It was the kind of love they wrote about. Not quite Romeo and Juliet, but man was it exciting.

She pulled out her phone.

_"Charlie?"_

"Hey, Sam! Look, I'm--"

_"You okay?"_

"Yes I'm fine, Sam, I am, I just--"

_"...you do know what time it is?"_

Charlie looked at her watch. Oops. It was still in time with Kansas, even though Oz was slightly different. Time was all kind of relative, anyway, she just slept when she was bored or tired enough.

"Sorry."

_"It's okay... what are you calling for?"_

"Do you know about Cas and Crowley?"

_"Do I... what?"_

Charlie slapped her hand to her mouth.

Shit.

"No reason."

_"C'mon, you're gonna have to--"_

But she'd already hung up.

No way was she going to 'out' them.

They'd tell the world when they were good and ready.

In the meantime, she was sure there'd be some good fluff on AO3. That would keep her going until she read about Cas telling Sam and Dean in one of the books.

Maybe she should find some way to contact him. After all, it would probably help him to talk to someone about it.

First, perhaps, she should finally get some sleep.

(But they were oh so very, very cute. And when Charlie finally settled down to sleep it was to thoughts of shy little kisses, of hand-holding, of cute little snark-fests and of an angel and a demon together forever. They were nice thoughts, and so were her dreams that followed.)


End file.
